History of Christian Theology - Emergence of Christian Theology

Emergence of Christian Theology

The emergence of Christian theology has sometimes been presented as the triumph of Hellenistic rationality over the Hebraic faith of Jesus and the early disciples. The early African theologian Tertullian, for instance, complained that the ‘Athens’ of philosophy was corrupting the ‘Jerusalem’ of faith. More recent discussions have qualified and nuanced this picture.

• From the very beginning of the Christian movement, followers of Jesus tried to make sense of the impact of Jesus of Nazareth, and began arguing about differing ways of making sense. There has never been an uncontested, unrationalized Christian faith.
• These processes of making sense initially drew upon the ideas and narratives of contemporary Judaism, which was already Hellenized in various degrees. As time went by, ideas and narratives from other Hellenistic context were drawn on, but the Jewish scriptures remained a key driver of theological development, and too sharp a distinction between Hebraic and Hellenistic is unsustainable. Some elements of early Christian theologizing previously thought to be thoroughly 'Hellenistic' (e.g., the Prologue of John's Gospel) are now regularly argued to be thoroughly Jewish.
• The ideas and narratives drawn on in this process were transformed as they were given a new context in Christian practices of devotion, community - formation and evangelism - and the extent to which borrowings from Hellenistic culture (for instance) were given new meanings in this process should not be underestimated.
• One of the characteristics of those strands of early Christianity (in the 2nd and 3rd centuries) sometimes called 'proto-orthodox' (because they are the most direct ancestors of the forms of Christianity that in the 4th century were defined as Orthodox), invested a great deal of time and energy in communication between widely spread conversations, and in pursuing a deep interest in each other’s beliefs and practices. This concern and communication seems to have been as much a driver of the development of theological activity as the desire to communicate Christianity to, or make it acceptable in, a Hellenistic culture.